It wasn’t by chance I met the person that gave me the courage to stand up for myself. It was during one of my vacation jobs I met him. He happened to be a close friend of an acquaintance who for some reason, took a particular interest in me. It wasn’t too long before I owned up to him that I was being abused at home. This was what he told me;
“Joy whenever you cannot perform any chore you are asked to do, say no and insist. Don’t let any of them push you to do likewise”.
This statement was tough to act out because I had allowed them to subdue me for long. After a long period of no improvement in their attitude toward me, I decided to act as he had stated.

You see, throughout the period I was being rejected and abused at home, I always told myself that I was insinuating and blowing the issue out of proportion. Many times I insisted that I had caused them to label me as such and that I needed to work on improving my personality. Little did I know that this was one of the outcomes of rejection or abuse – turning your anger inwards. It therefore, took a lot of guts for me to start to act as advised above.

The one reason, I decided to do so was because my body was screaming out as I was tired and couldn’t go on any further with the incessant house chores. My mum, who never liked to see one resting, made sure of this. With time I started refusing to lift a finger. In so doing, I would lay on my bed and turn my head to the wall. My entire family would take turns to come raining all kinds of insults and abuses on me. It was painful as I would sob uncontrollably telling myself that I was no good and nothing good would ever come out of me. I would tell myself that I was lazy and no one would ever like me or want me in the future. I told myself that I would not trust anyone nor agree to get married.

Many months went by with this incident happening until of course it was time to go to the university. I took my course seriously at school and refused to go home on breaks, using the opportunity to stay back to study further. My hard work finally paid off as my graduation result was top of the range. In fact, my score was higher than that of all my siblings.

This was when the envy started.

I never understood it but as far as I was concerned, I was unsure of what I had done this time around. It didn’t take so long for my immediate elder to wish me ill luck in life because of my results. Her words to me were “Joy graduating with a Second class Upper is not a guarantee of a job let that sink into your skull”. But of course, this turned out to be untrue because God made sure I never lacked a job.

In another case when I got my first job because my immediate younger had equally gone for the interview and was not considered, she took time to remind me that the offer was hers and not mine. The only reason why I was considered, was because the role was not her area of specialization. She threatened to pray that I would lose my job. These words coming from my siblings were enough to break me completely and they did. I became a broken individual, with poor self-esteem, who regarded herself as nothing.

Just when I thought it may be possible to live in my dad’s house whilst working, my mum took a belt and flogged me at age thirty. Why? because I changed the tv channel that the hired help was watching when I got home. I quietly told her before the beating started that I did not ask the help to leave the sitting room. I only changed the channel, she was very angry at my statement and started to flog me with a belt. Of course, it became obvious that my next point of action was to leave my dad’s house because the situation had degenerated into a bad state. Moreover, If she could flog me with a belt at age thirty, then there was no stopping her from going further.

Despite my health challenges and my dad’s house being in the same vicinity where I worked, I moved out.

Life on the outside wasn’t easy because I never could stay away from them. In it all, I watched the situation degenerate into more quarrels, control, and endless arguments that I never won. Furthermore, other issues transpired as a result of my health that caused me to have to move back home but I look back now and see it as the worst decision I made.

Nonetheless, it was pertinent because I needed to receive their final wake-up call to stay away.

How did this occur? I was thrown out.

(to be concluded).